


From the Dark

by Meltha



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pre-Series, Season 2, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 22:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meltha/pseuds/Meltha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Lindsey drives away from L.A., he knows he will be drawn back again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [winterlive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterlive/gifts).



> Disclaimer: All characters are owned by Mutant Enemy (Joss Whedon), a wonderfully creative company whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
> 
> Author's Note: Written as a birthday present for Winter.

Lindsey was driving in that mental state people reach where the road almost ceases to exist and the world becomes a blur sliding past at twenty miles above the speed limit accompanied by a hum that might be an engine purring or might be a heartbeat thudding, and the difference between the two isn’t clear anymore. He was inside his own head, and there was more than enough to keep him occupied in there for several lifetimes.

He wondered blandly if that was part of the deal with Wolfram & Hart: lifetime after lifetime of thinking about the bizarre paths his destiny had taken and the chances along the way where maybe, possibly, something might have changed if only, if only, if only. Reincarnation via self-doubt. It was an interesting concept, and one a little too in line with the Senior Partners’ philosophies for him to dismiss it. He was out of that net now, though for just how long he didn’t know. There were repercussions for walking away from his job, evil hand or not. He was going to have to pay the piper, and the drummer, and the guitarist, and possible some guy with a piccolo before this was over unless he could think of a way to slip under the radar of evil itself, and at the moment a brainstorm on that one just wasn’t coming.

The radio was playing softly in the background, some of Patsy Cline’s early stuff, sweet and sounding like summer evenings on the front porch back home before things got too confusing, too complicated. It had been months since he’d looked into the night sky and seen stars instead of the glare of L.A. blocking out everything except the moon, and he realized that he hadn’t even noticed they were missing until now. Night and the soft, balmy, palpable heat of summer from his boyhood were mixed in his memories so closely that they were inextricably intertwined.

He’d never been afraid of the night as a kid; his daddy had said it wasn’t natural for a boy to take so to the darkness as he did, but to Lindsey that darkness had a kind of freedom to it. If it was dark enough, no one saw the patches on the knees of his outgrown jeans or how faded his t-shirts were. No one saw the way his elbows stuck out too much from never having enough to eat, scrawny teenage boy, short and bony, shrimp of the school and laughed at for coming from the wrong side of the tracks, and worse, for being smarter than the rich kids. In the dark, no one could tell when his eyes were following his latest crushes: the cheerleader with curves so enticing she could have been made of scoops of vanilla ice cream, wearing skirts short enough to make him hope she’d drop her books; and, more hidden yet, the wrestler with the powerful arms and brash, bullying power that he couldn’t help but envy and the laugh that made his knees go weak, even when he was the butt of the joke more times than he could recall.

The “cops suck” sign had been removed after only a few miles. He wasn’t stupid; he’d known it was there. Angel wasn’t the type to let bygones be bygones without a bit of a shove at his ego. So what if they’d ended the suffering of a few people together? Angel knew perfectly well that Lindsey had done more than his fair share of damage without a blink; the hand was simply too personal, too close, too much a damn Star Wars reference to him tossing away humanity in favor of the dark side not to shake him up. They’d been allies a couple of times, briefly. They’d loved the same woman, demon, whatever the hell you wanted to call Darla, though Lindsey had been willing to kill for her while Angel had been willing to die for her. Was it really so different? Were they really so different? What right did a vampire who had murdered for over a century have to feel superior to him, treat him like garbage?

It had felt good, for a moment, to know Angel was at his back not to stab him in it but to protect it. For a brief instant, in a car now hundreds of miles from the clamor of the City of Angels, he caught the faintest scent of a leather coat, the smell harsh and male, making the hairs on his arms stand at attention. He remembered the voice of a man, demon, whatever the hell you wanted to call Angel, whipping out at him with biting truths, shaking him out of the self-induced moral torpor he had been living in, slicing through layers of carefully built indifference. He remembered watching him in the dark, the play of the bright streetlights through the windows of the car setting his profile into relief against the passing colors of the city, eyes unblinking as they stared at the road while they traveled to their destination. Brown eyes. He hated himself for remembering they were brown, for unwillingly memorizing every curve of muscle. He was lusting for the bully again, the bully tearing him down, telling him he wasn’t good enough, but this time Lindsey had agreed.

Sunrise was starting to paint the sky in pale gray light: no colors yet. The road kept rolling past in a hypnotically monotonous smear, one country song blending into another and another and another, all of them singing about how much love sucked. Snorting in disgust at how maudlin he’d become, he turned the radio off so viciously the knob cracked. He checked his gas gauge; still a quarter of a tank and a hell of a long way to go, wherever he was going. Lindsey pressed the accelerator down a little more firmly, gunning the motor and pushing the speedometer over 95. He may not know where he was going, but in that moment as the dawn came up, he knew one thing: he hadn’t seen the last of L.A., not by a country mile.


End file.
